Page 3 of Hunted By Them

I am not small here.

I underlined the last sentence. The cabin creaked like it agreed. I smiled into my cup, steam softening the edges of the room.

A sound outside lifted the hairs on my arms again. Not thunder. Not rain. A step. Then another. Slow and deliberate.

My breath froze in my chest. I set the cup down quietly and turned off the flashlight. The room went green-gray with the storm’s light. I slid closer to the window and eased up to it until I could see a narrow slice of the clearing.

Rain streaked the view like silver sheets. The big pine stood like a sentinel. For a moment, there was only the shimmer of water and the sway of branches. Then, at the edge of the trees, a shape separated from shadow. I blinked, not believing what I saw.

It was tall and still. A darker cut-out against the wet green. Indistinguishable. My heart thudded so hard it hurt. I blinked again. The shape didn’t move, or maybe it did. In the next blink, the shadow was gone, swallowed by the forest.

I stayed at the window until my tea went cold. The shape never reappeared. Eventually, the storm softened to a lullaby. I told myself it had been a trick of light and distance. I told myself many things that sounded reasonable. And tried to ignore the fact that the footstep I’d heard had been much closer…right outside the door.

“No, Sage, we are not doing this,” I mumbled.

Turning my flashlight back on, I finally lay back on the sleeping pad. The cabin smelled like mint and wet wood. The rain kept time on the roof. The pen rested by my notebook, and the last line I had written glowed pale in the dim flashlight glow.

I am not small here.

I closed my eyes and listened to the storm carry the world away, and I knew four things with certainty. Tomorrow, the sky would break open and wash everything clean. I was never going back to Connor. I needed to quit my job and find one that valued me.

And…I was not alone in these woods, not at all.

RYDER

The storm had teeth tonight.

It tore across the ridges and sank its sharp fangs into the valley, gnashing at the trees until they groaned and bent. Rain hammered my skin, running down my tattoos and muscles like I was carved from the storm itself. Most people cursed nights like this. They hid in cabins, curled up by fires, and waited it out.

But I…we…weren’t most men.

A storm like this stripped everything bare. It made the world honest and forced people to remember that there were things other than their fancy technology. That space between the stormy sky and the wild wilderness…that was where the hunt lived.

I’d seen her car first. The small, silver hatchback was parked in the furthest corner of the gravel lot like she’d tried to get it to disappear. Brave little thing, hiking alone into our woods with a storm stalking the horizon.

Brave or stupid. Maybe both. Either way, she was ours now.

From the ridge, I watched her stumble into the cabin. Lightning lit her frame in fractured glimpses. Long dark hair up in a ponytail, a bright red pack, and a matching jacket. She opened the cabin door and closed it behind her like she already knew the rules of the game. My jaw tightened under the deer skull, the bones shifting like they were my own.

Dash crouched at my feet, leaning forward to stare down at the cabin and our prey within.

“She’s skittish. Bet I can have her bolting in thirty seconds.” His voice carried a gravelly edge under the elk skull.

“Not yet.”

My eyes searched the forest’s edge near the cabin for Jaxon and just made out his shadow moving into position.

Dash chuckled, restless energy rolling off him. He liked the chase fast and a little too messy. Jaxon, though…he was all stealth, eyes on me, waiting. He was my shadow twin.

We didn’t rush prey. We let them simmer. Fear wasn’t the point of the snap of a branch or the scuff of a boot. It was the creak of an old tree, every second of silence making the air heavier. It wasn’t the running that mattered. It was when they stopped running, and what they chose to do that counted.

“She’s not just prey,” I murmured. The rain dripped from my antlers, heavy lines tracing my silhouette. “She’s our Sweet Daisy. And our Sweet Daisy must crawl into the trap on her own. She’ll splay herself open and let us feast.”

Dash laughed, sharp and mean. “You’re naming them now?”

I tilted my head, watching the faint glow of her flashlight inside the cabin. Her shadow moved quickly, yet jerky across the boards. Already panicking. Already listening for us, like she was attuned to our presence and what that meant.

“She’s named because she’s ours.”